A diverse group of college students with PTSD undergoes an experimental therapy that accidentally allows a dark entity to intensify their involuntary traumatic flashbacks until they're fatal: the students must find a way to fight back before their memories kill them all.

SYNOPSIS:

A diverse group of college students with PTSD undergoes an experimental therapy that accidentally allows a dark entity to intensify their involuntary traumatic flashbacks until they're fatal: the students must find a way to fight back before their memories kill them all.

While she waits for her first experimental treatment for PTSD, Dahlia Merrick (18, black) remembers Dr. Isaac Newberry (36, white) explaining he will enter her traumatic memories with her to help heal the wounds. In the waiting room, she meets Michelle Cranston (19, white), part of her experimental group, a survivor of a notorious school shooting. She also meets Reshard DeWitt (22, black), who promises to stay in touch. She goes in for her session, and, using a combination of a new drug and electrical stimulation, she and Dr. Newberry invisibly watch inside her memory of escaped criminal Donnie Tread (40s, white) murdering her parents. Afterward, Dahlia believes the treatment is helping.

After her treatment, Michelle flashes back to the school shooting, but the memory has become more personal and horrific. A strange man in sunglasses seems to encourage the memory to unfold in a new way. Reshard re-experiences the memory of the near-fatal beating a white cop gave him at age 14, and this time, three white supremacists join in as the strange man watches the violence. Michelle and Reshard locate final group members Elena Tanaka (20, Asian-American) and Freddie Meyer (21, white). Elena flashes back to being molested by her uncle at age 12. Freddie’s trauma involves someone posting a video of a humiliating moment online. Group members meet and decide they must inform Dr. Newberry about the changing memories and the strange Watcher. Dr. Newberry and his colleague Dr. Maria Plata (34, Latina) suspect Amos Kirkland (30, white), the experiment’s drug supplier, could be The Watcher. Soon, revisiting even more horrifying versions of their memories leaves Michelle catatonic, Reshard dead from a heart attack, and Freddie a suicide. Dahlia and Elena join one last experiment with Dr. Newberry in his office. Dr. Plata, armed with a handgun, will watch over Amos while the others, inside memories, will lure The Watcher, if he is not Amos, into a trap.

Dahlia and Elena begin in Dahlia’s memory. Donnie Tread chases Dahlia and Elena down Dahlia’s childhood street until, after a fight, Donnie disappears. Dahlia’s childhood neighborhood blends into Elena’s. They go to Elena’s house and battle her uncle and The Watcher, whom they chase back outside, where Donnie is waiting. In the memory, Donnie kills Elena, and in the office, Elena dies from a brain hemorrhage. Amos panics, seizes Dr. Plata’s gun, and shoots her. People start pounding on the office door. Back in the memory, Dahlia manages to overpower Donnie. Dr. Newberry finally finds her and helps her chase The Watcher into his memory. They follow The Watcher down hospital corridors populated by villains from others’ memories. At last, Dahlia attacks The Watcher, knocking off his sunglasses. In his eye sockets she sees endless darkness. She and Dr. Newberry lock him in a padded room, the planned trap, and snap out of the memory. In the office, guards, orderlies, and a nurse burst in. A guard shoots Amos. Dr. Newberry screams about The Watcher being in his head, using his eyes. Orderlies take him away. The nurse offers Dahlia comfort, but she shakes her head in a way that hints that she, too, has succumbed to The Watcher’s darkness.

Wound Watchers was a nominee for the Best Screenplay Award, Shockfest Film Festival, 2023, a semi-finalist in the Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards, 2023, and won third place, Suspense-Thriller Feature, at the 2023 International Horror Hotel.